WHICH(1)						      General Commands Manual							  WHICH(1)

NAME

       which - shows the full path of (shell) commands.

SYNOPSIS

       which [options] [--] programname [...]

DESCRIPTION

       Which takes one or more arguments. For each of its arguments it prints to stdout the full path of the executables that would have been exe-
       cuted when this argument had been entered at the shell prompt. It does this by searching for an executable or script in the directories
       listed in the environment variable PATH using the same algorithm as bash(1).

       This man page is generated from the file which.texinfo.

OPTIONS

       --all, -a
	   Print all matching executables in PATH, not just the first.

       --read-alias, -i
	   Read aliases from stdin, reporting matching ones on stdout. This is useful in combination with using an alias for which itself. For
	   example
	   alias which='alias | which -i'.

       --skip-alias
	   Ignore option `--read-alias', if any. This is useful to explicity search for normal binaries, while using the `--read-alias' option in
	   an alias or function for which.

       --read-functions
	   Read shell function definitions from stdin, reporting matching ones on stdout. This is useful in combination with using a shell func-
	   tion for which itself.  For example:
	   which() { declare -f | which --read-functions $@ }
	   export -f which

       --skip-functions
	   Ignore option `--read-functions', if any. This is useful to explicity search for normal binaries, while using the `--read-functions'
	   option in an alias or function for which.

       --skip-dot
	   Skip directories in PATH that start with a dot.

       --skip-tilde
	   Skip directories in PATH that start with a tilde and executables which reside in the HOME directory.

       --show-dot
	   If a directory in PATH starts with a dot and a matching executable was found for that path, then print "./programname" rather than the
	   full path.

       --show-tilde
	   Output a tilde when a directory matches the HOME directory. This option is ignored when which is invoked as root.

       --tty-only
	   Stop processing options on the right if not on tty.

       --version,-v,-V
	   Print version information on standard output then exit successfully.

       --help
	   Print usage information on standard output then exit successfully.

RETURN VALUE

       Which returns the number of failed arguments, or -1 when no `programname' was given.

EXAMPLE

       The recommended way to use this utility is by adding an alias (C shell) or shell function (Bourne shell) for which like the following:

       [ba]sh:

	    which ()
	    {
	      (alias; declare -f) | /usr/bin/which --tty-only --read-alias --read-functions --show-tilde --show-dot $@
	    }
	    export -f which

       [t]csh:

	    alias which 'alias | /usr/bin/which --tty-only --read-alias --show-dot --show-tilde'

       This will print the readable ~/ and ./ when starting which from your prompt, while still printing the full path when used from a script:

	    > which q2
	    ~/bin/q2
	    > echo `which q2`
	    /home/carlo/bin/q2

BUGS

       The HOME directory is determined by looking for the HOME environment variable, which aborts when this variable doesn't exist.   Which  will
       consider two equivalent directories to be different when one of them contains a path with a symbolic link.

AUTHOR

       Carlo Wood <carlo@gnu.org>

SEE ALSO

       bash(1)

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